- US home sales fell in March
Source: ABC News
“Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in March to their slowest pace nine months, as easing mortgage rates failed to motivate home shoppers during what’s traditionally been the busiest time of the year for the housing market. Existing home sales fell 3.6% last month from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Sales also fell 1% compared with March last year, weighed down by declines in the Northeast and Midwest. The latest sales figure fell short of the roughly 4.06 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.” (04/13/26)
https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/us-home-sales-fall-march-marking-slow-start-131993414
- Study: Majority of Australian kids are still on banned social media platforms
Source: Engadget
“Many countries are pursuing social media bans for anyone under 16, but a recent poll is putting the effectiveness of such laws into question. The Molly Rose Foundation, a charity organization that focuses on preventing online harm, recently published a study that polled 1,050 Australian children between ages 12 and 15 in March. The study’s results showed that 61 percent of those between 12 and 15 who previously had access to affected social media platforms still have one or more active accounts. Australia made a first-in-the-world decision to ban social media for those under 16 years old, beginning on December 10. While it’s only been a few months since the ban went into effect, the foundation’s poll concluded that the ban doesn’t have a ‘clear positive or negative impact on children’s wellbeing.’ The study also noted that 70 percent of children trying to get on restricted platforms said that it was easy to get around the ban.” (04/13/26)
- Hollywood stars sign open letter protesting the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger
Source: NBC News
“Bryan Cranston, Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix and more than 1,000 other Hollywood professionals released an open letter Monday vehemently opposing Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing that the corporate tie-up would hurt an industry ‘already under severe strain.’ ‘This transaction would further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape, reducing competition at a moment when our industries — and the audiences we serve — can least afford it,’ the signatories wrote in the letter, published early Monday on a website called Block the Merger. … The list of signatories includes A-list stars (Glenn Close, Ben Stiller), celebrated filmmakers (Yorgos Lanthimos, Denis Villeneuve) and acclaimed writers (‘The Sopranos’ creator David Chase).” (04/13/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/media/hollywood-letter-paramount-warner-bros-merger-rcna331499
- Judge dismisses Trump’s frivolous defamation suit vs. Wall Street Journal
Source: USA Today
“A judge dismissed President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for alleging he sent Jeffrey Epstein a lewd birthday note but said Trump may amend the lawsuit and refile it within two weeks. … Florida federal Judge Darrin P. Gayles ruled Trump didn’t make a plausible allegation in his lawsuit that The Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, published the story with ‘actual malice,’ a legal term referring to publishing something while either knowing it was false or with a reckless disregard for whether it was false.” (04/13/26)
- Nigeria: Scores Killed in Regime Military Strikes as Clashes With Militants Intensify
Source: New York Times
“At least 50 people were killed and many others injured when the Nigerian military conducted airstrikes Saturday against insurgents in northeastern Nigeria, according to residents and the local authorities. A Nigerian military spokesman, Lt. Col. Sani Uba, said the strikes hit what he called a terrorist enclave and logistics hub near Jilli, in what he said was an abandoned village in Borno State, killing militants who had taken up residence there. But the local authorities and human rights groups described a starkly different scene, saying the bombs struck a weekly market that attracts hundreds of people and denying that the town was abandoned. They said the number of dead, mostly civilians, was much higher than reported.” (04/13/26)
- TikTok psychic seeks relief from $10 million verdict for false claims in Idaho student murders
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“A self-proclaimed psychic who in TikTok videos falsely accused a University of Idaho professor of being involved in the murders of four of the school’s students in 2022 is appealing for relief after a civil court jury ordered her to pay $10m in damages to the educator. In a recent legal filing that she prepared herself, tarot card reader Ashley Guillard called the case brought against her by history professor Rebecca Scofield ‘fraudulent’ and asked the federal court in Idaho where a jury delivered a verdict against her to set aside the judgment. … Before authorities arrested Kohberger in late December 2022 in connection with the victims’ brutal stabbing deaths, Guillard published videos on the TikTok platform baselessly alleging Scofield had engaged in a romance with one of the four people slain.” (04/13/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/13/university-of-idaho-murders-tiktok-psychic
- India: Police Attack Allegedly Violent Protesters With Chemical Weapons
Source: US News & World Report
“Police lobbed tear gas shells and used ‘minimum force’ on Monday to quell a factory workers’ protest in the Indian national capital’s suburb of Noida, which turned violent on its fourth day, with vehicles torched and stones pelted in parts of the satellite city. … Visuals from news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed dozens of protesters marching on the street and chanting slogans, while security personnel in anti-riot gear looked on. Other visuals showed an overturned vehicle with flames rising out of it, and protesters hurling stones and trying to break through barricades.” (04/13/26)
- Pope Leo lands in Algeria for historic visit as he starts Africa tour
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Pope Leo XIV has begun a landmark visit to Algeria in the first trip to the Muslim-majority country by a pontiff. The United States-born pope arrived in the capital Algiers at around 09:00 GMT on Monday, an AFP news agency journalist travelling aboard the papal plane said. He is expected to pay tribute to victims of Algeria’s war of independence from France (1954-1962) later in the day. The 70-year-old pontiff is on an ambitious 11-day tour of four countries in Africa, urging global leaders to address the needs of the continent where more than a fifth of the world’s Catholics live, according to Vatican statistics.” (04/13/26)
- CA: Republicans break with Trump in gubernatorial race
Source: Politico
“California Republicans refused Sunday to endorse Donald Trump’s pick for governor here, a stark rebuke of the sitting president by the party’s rank-and-file in the nation’s most populous state. The activists’ break with Trump — electing not to endorse in the contest, despite his backing of former Fox News host Steve Hilton — came amid worsening fears within the GOP about the party’s prospects in the midterms, including in critical House battlegrounds in California. … More party delegates voted for Chad Bianco, a firebrand Southern California sheriff who launched a probe into last year’s special election, than Hilton, with neither reaching the 60 percent threshold necessary to secure an endorsement. Bianco received 49 percent support, Hilton drew 44 percent, and the rest of delegates voted not to endorse.” (04/12/26)
- How silencing medical debates puts patients at risk
Source: Expression
by Alison Riddoch“Some topics in medicine can be uncomfortable to discuss. But debate and disagreement are signs of conversations worth having, not problems to be avoided. It is only through open discussion that we can meaningfully address questions about ethics, patient care, and medical judgment. When educational institutions censor these conversations, they prevent the very debate necessary for informed decision-making, leaving students less equipped to navigate the ethical and clinical challenges of their chosen fields. Regardless of one’s views on late-term abortion, the ethical questions it raises are a reality that future medical practitioners must confront.” (04/13/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/how-silencing-medical-debates-puts
- A Confrontation with Truth
Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon“If you live where I live, which is the United States, your country has been at war overseas for the last many weeks, and also for your entire life. The latest iteration of this war is between a fanatical religious autocracy whose militaristic posture, nuclear ambitions, and zeal for apocalyptic outcomes threatens the future of human life on the planet, and Iran. Yes, despite the best efforts of corporate media propaganda outlets to try to channel the U.S.’s latest needless adventures in overseas civilian-murder into more traditional narratives of American exceptionalism, it has not escaped the attention of most people that the current temporary U.S. president and longtime child rapist Don Trump is utterly deranged.” (04/13/26)
- Orbán Lost Spectacularly Because the Hungarian People Simply Stopped Fearing His Authoritarianism
Source: The UnPopulust
by Laszlo Gendler“Magyar’s victory was not supposed to be possible. Orbán was not supposed to lose his grip on power. How, exactly, did Orbán fail to steal the election? The structural advantages were real and formidable. The gerrymandered electoral map had delivered Fidesz 135 seats on 54% of the vote in 2022. Campaign spending limits had been abolished. Fidesz and its proxies outspent Tisza 11 to 1 on advertising. … Part of the answer is that the EU held its ground. The €19 billion in frozen funds — suspended over rule-of-law violations — became a material argument that Orbán’s system carried a direct cost for ordinary Hungarians. … But the larger answer, put simply, is bravery. Autocracy runs on fear—on the assumption that enough people, confronted with sufficient consequences, will decide that compliance is safer than truth. What dismantled Orbán’s operation was the accumulation of individual decisions to the contrary.” (04/13/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/orban-lost-spectacularly-because - The Twelfth Stone
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“He didn’t recognize them anymore. The world he knew had shattered, and they were all but shards. Sometimes they cut. Whether he walked among the market throngs or sat alone in the forest, he felt alone. In that solitude, he was hollow and anxious, surrounded by loud waves of change, fear, and anger. Sometimes he wanted to gasp and kick, thinking that soon he might tire of treading water, then fall into the deep and drown. But a few, he saw, had turned back to the old ways—the books, the traditions, the places of worship.” (04/13/26)
- It’s Time to Bring Back Hierarchical Zoning
Source: Independent Institute
by Christopher J Calton“In recent years, a growing number of states have begun to allow residential construction in commercial zones in an effort to lower rising housing costs. Since 2023, six states — California, Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Texas — have passed laws requiring local governments to permit multifamily and mixed-use developments in commercial zones (and in some cases, industrial zones). Other states have adopted more modest reforms to allow commercial-to-residential conversions. The trend encouraging residential construction in nonresidential zones resembles an early model of zoning known as ‘hierarchical zoning.’ With the country facing rising housing costs and an unprecedented shortage of multifamily homes, it may be time to bring hierarchical zoning back to America’s cities.” [editor’s note: Better yet, ELIMINATE zoning! – TLK] (04/13/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/13/hierarchical-zoning/
- Quitting Time?
Source: The American Conservative
by Bill Kauffman“While waiting for Vice President J.D. Vance — who as Senator Vance was among the corporal’s guard of war skeptics in that body — either to regain his voice or to reclaim his cojones from a safe-deposit box buried deep within the bowels of Trump Tower, patriots in the administration’s foreign-policy division might examine how their forebears answered the question, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ In Resignation in Protest (1975), the political scientists Edward Weisband and Thomas M. Franck wondered why, despite Vietnam and Watergate, there had been so few ‘courageous public defections of key disaffected members of the Johnson and Nixon administrations.'” (04/13/26)
- FDR’s Hubris
Source: Law & Liberty
by Zachary Yost“Even from a historical distance, the fireside chats have concealed his petty and vindictive side.” (04/13/26)
- State Wars Bleed a Nation to Death
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith“The US, with its military prowess that comprises approximately 37 percent of all global military spending and exceeds the combined defense budgets of the next nine largest spenders, no longer worries about winning or losing wars. The point is to get them started — let the death and destruction begin. That’s where the money is — initially. Later, profits are made from rebuilding countries the attackers have demolished. But there’s a looming question: Does the American state have the funds to pick on any country it chooses? The answer: As long as the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve remains functional and Americans remain ignorant of its work, the sky’s the limit, at least until people wise up or the ink runs dry on its printing press.” (04/13/26)
- The Housing Crisis Is a Supply Problem
Source: The Daily Economy
by Christopher Freiman“Rising prices make us look for someone to blame, but the broken market has a simple cause: it’s illegal to build enough homes.” (04/13/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-housing-crisis-is-a-supply-problem/
- UK Royal Navy Russia’s “shadow fleet” makes mockery of UK naval power
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Ian Proud“Even if Britain sent troops to board escorted tankers, they might be fired upon with no effective military means to push back Moscow’s navy.” (04/13/26)
- The Constitution Died in Korea
Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño“The Constitution of the United States could not be clearer on the question of who possesses the authority to take the nation to war. Article I, Section 8 grants Congress alone the power ‘to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.’ The Founders understood that the decision to send Americans to kill and die in foreign lands was too consequential to rest in the hands of a single individual. They had witnessed the European monarchs drag their subjects into endless conflicts for dynastic glory and they resolved that the American republic would be different. That resolution lasted until 1950. President Harry Truman’s decision to send American forces into Korea without a congressional declaration of war established the precedent that every subsequent president has exploited.” (04/13/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-constitution-died-in-korea
- Quantum Vibe, 04/13/26
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott BieserCartoon. (04/13/26)
- The Post-Populist Dilemma
Source: Yascha Mounk
by Yascha Mounk“Orbán is out. Now comes the hard part.” (04/12/26)
- Lebanon, Iran, and the Forgotten Plight of the Shia “Infidel”
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“As a badly battered Middle East hangs off the edge of a cliff by a string with a temporary ceasefire between the United States and Iran, peace or anything remotely resembling it looks even less likely for Southern Lebanon than it does for the rest of that treacherous map drawn by dead British arseholes. Even if Israel were the kind of creature who could be trusted to respect a ceasefire with anyone, much of the damage is already done.” (04/12/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/04/lebanon-iran-and-forgotten-plight-of.html
- Purge the Neoconservatives
Source: The Realist Review
by Chris Mott“Under the influence of neoconservatism and other varieties of hawkism, America has lost its ability to think strategically and now acts as one of the primary sources of global instability. But herein lies the opportunity, as every time the neoconservatives manage to achieve their aims, their popularity and prestige collapse once the results become apparent. New and establishment-bucking political candidates openly run against them, thanks to a strong desire amongst the public to move on from wars that don’t advance the national interest. And the neoconservatives have, potentially, sown the seeds of their own dismantling in the security state they have helped to build.” (04/12/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/purge-the-neoconservatives
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 04/13/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Trump To Iran: ‘We’re Gonna Blockade Your Blockade!'” (04/13/26)
- EconTalk, 04/13/26
Source: EconTalk
“The Man Who Built NVIDIA (with Stephen Witt).” (04/13/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/the-man-who-built-nvidia-with-stephen-witt/
- Chasing Ghosts, episode 81
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Strategic Empathy: Grokking the Pendulum of Indecision.” (04/13/26)
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 04/12/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“US Military Says It Will Blockade Iran’s Ports, US and Israel May Start Bombing Iran Again, and More.” (04/12/26)
- Free Talk Live, 04/12/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Internet routers being nationalized in the US :: Cash for Clunkers but for routers :: AI data centers are buying up all manufacturing capacity for electronics, driving up prices :: Penguin warns of upcoming electronics price surges :: Why the US can’t use our own oil :: Talks of Forkfest which is coming soon :: Liberty failing in all of the world except New Hampshire :: How do you define Free Stater? :: What does liberty mean? :: Dems in NH and their anger and hate towards Free Staters :: It’s over for us as far as privacy in electronics, we’re screwed :: Steve Gibson’s Security Now! podcast :: Article by Activist Post about Ian Freeman being in a cage while Epstein’s clients walk free :: DCYF kidnapping children but Free Staters are pushing back :: 2026-04-12 :: Hosts: Bonnie, Mark Edge, Penguin.” (04/12/26)